My client has applied several different dip color changes to his car before deciding to deck out his car in homage to the Transformers character Barricade. ...

At no point did he represent himself as a police officer.

At no point did he attempt to pull anyone over.

My client does not and has never carried a gun or a badge, or dressed as a police officer.

The car itself, while certainly distinctive, did not have any blue lights like an actual police car. Despite decoration that make it look similar to a police car, it does not bear any official town or state seal of any police department.

The statute for impersonating a police officer MGL Chapter 268 Section 33 states that a person must â€śacts as such or requires a person to aid or assist him in a matter pertaining to the duty of such officerâ€ť.

My client did none of these things. Therefore the clerk magistrate should drop this case, and I believe that is what should happen at our upcoming court date next month.

I used to work at the House of Blues back in the olden days when it was in Harvard Square. At the time, we had a replica Bluesmobile (old Dodge sedan painted to look like a police cruiser and with a loudspeaker on top, like in the Blues Brothers movie). We would ride all around Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville in that thing, both to promote shows and sometimes just to get gear and people to an event.

The only time the police seemed to mind was when I used the roof-mounted loudspeaker to try to flirt with ladies walking by. If that thing was legit, then this Maserati certainly is too.

Oh, yeah. It was harassment on the verge of assault. This thing had a speaker cone that was three feet in diameter, so it was kind of like trying to flirt with one of those LRADs the police were using in Ferguson the other night.

Where he decaled "Speed Enforcement" just like the movie paint job. It's a bit more damning than the hashtags and Transformers references on the rest of the car.

However, the law does say looks like a cop "AND acts" like a cop. Not "or". So, barring the guy having been pulled over and saying something stupid like, "Hello, fellow officer" to the cop that gave him a ticket, I don't see how this sticks.

I'm tempted to say it IS a crime to do that to such a beautiful vehicle, but perhaps police cars should look less like military vehicles these days. Driving through the suburbs like Lexington you see just the most aggressive looking cars that are designed to not look like cop cars anyway... I think this guy has a case, and towns have a lesson to learn.

If you don't want to get depressed, don't Google "civil forfeiture" and especially don't read this New Yorker article on the topic, but police have been known to seize fancy sports cars from alleged drug dealers and re-use them, so that's no longer a good defense.